


A Reason to Starve

by zeldadestry



Category: Firefly
Genre: Community: 100_women, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-01-12
Updated: 2006-01-12
Packaged: 2017-10-27 14:04:53
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/296651
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zeldadestry/pseuds/zeldadestry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Zoe and Jayne and Mal are supposed to bring Simon back. They aren’t supposed to be doing anything else.  There’s nothing else they can do for her, don’t they understand that?</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Reason to Starve

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt 012, 'Tears', 100_women Fanfic Challenge

Kaylee is here. River remembers her name, repeats it to herself as the food is put beside her bed on a tray. This is Kaylee. Kaylee wants me to eat. Kaylee will cry if I don’t eat something. Kaylee has always been good to me and I don’t want to make her cry. Kaylee has always been good to me, but Kaylee is afraid of me. Everyone around me is afraid of me.

When she sits up, slowly, because the room spins, Kaylee’s eager face is in front of her. “Hi, honey,” she says. “We’ve got a treat for you.” On the plate, four shortcakes, which are never very good when they’re made from protein powder, are stacked. Each cake is topped with a generous pat of butter. There’s a little pitcher with an amber liquid River recognizes, and she sticks her finger into it, sucks the musky sweet syrup from her finger. “It’s real!” Kaylee says, clapping her hands. “It’s not synthetic, it’s from real maple trees they’ve got growing on one of the core planets. Zoe remembered how you liked it, wann’t that nice of her?” Zoe. Zoe and Jayne and Mal are supposed to bring Simon back. They aren’t supposed to be doing anything else. There’s nothing else they can do for her, don’t they understand that? River cowers back, moves away, into the corner of her bed, the corner of the room, the place where the walls meet and stand on either side of her, how she likes. She crouches there, staring at Kaylee, whose smile falters. “I’ll just fix your breakfast,” she says, but when she reaches for the pitcher, River springs forward and knocks her hand away. Tears swell in Kaylee’s eyes, but River can not say sorry. She still knows the words, but not how to speak them. Kaylee retreats across the room, looks down at her trembling hands. River’s mouth waters as she contemplates the butter, and she takes that as a sign to eat one of the pieces. She sticks her fingers into the syrup again, and the sweetness is still good as she licks it from her hand. When she is finished, Kaylee moves slowly forward, holding a damp cloth to wipe the grease from River’s fingers, the sticky streak of syrup from her cheek. Done washing, she says, “Please try the pancakes, honey. We got to put some meat on you.”

River shakes her head. This is the plan, the plan is to fade away. Why can’t Kaylee understand?

If they want to help her, all they can do is find him, bring him home, home to her. She lives for him. He is all she hungers for.  



End file.
